My reckonings with land, language, family and a settler’s imagination can be found in the memoir, Sainted Dirt (under submission), and in the anthology Body & Soul: Stories for Skeptics and Seekers (Caitlin Press, January 2019). To complete this research and writing, I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund.

Looking forward to 2019!

January onward: launching Body & Soul with contributors (28 in all, Canadian women writers and poets), beginning in Montreal; then on to Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo, Vancouver, and so on. Stay tuned for details.

March 15th: Nonfiction panel at Wilfrid Laurier University, with Emily Urquhart and Tasneem Jamal, as part of Emily’s tenure as Edna Staebler Writer-in-Residence at WLU. (Psst: we all have “Edna Staebler” in our bios!)

April: The wayward bride in Appalachia. At age 18, I eloped to the North Carolina foothills, to marry a young man I hardly knew. A musician, who talked me into going South. This spring, my daughter, Toronto filmmaker Cailleah Scott-Grimes, and I will go looking for those who sheltered (and married) me way back when.

October: Launch of Foment, literary magazine cued to the Ottawa Writers Festival. Honoured to write the afterword for this year’s edition.

September: “Greeting fields.” A generous grant from the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund gave me time in ancestral territory, researching the Bruce County archives in Southampton to write the capstone chapter of my book, Sainted Dirt.

June 20-24th: Writer-in-residenceat GalleryMétèque in Montreal (NDG) to celebrate the start of Native Immigrant VII: Tionnhekwen: The Seeds of Life. The residency includes a writing workshop (11-1 PM, June 24th), as well as meetings with artists, writers, publishers and activists to discuss the role of writing in cultural collaboration. I will also be joining collective members in gathering oral histories around Dress # 7, The Seeds of Life installation.

Writing Retreat to work on Sainted Dirt. The chapter, “Zion’s Children,” was long-listed in the CNFC’s recent contest. Thanks to the contest organizers and to judges willing to take risks on my unorthodox saga about eloping to a commune deep in Appalachia.

Also, Body & Soul: Creative Nonfiction for Seekers and Skeptics showcases extraordinary original work by diverse women writers from around the country. What an honour to be editing this anthology. Alison Pick penned the foreword, which will also appear in TNQ 145 (winter 2018). More details in an upcoming post.

April 28th: Arts & Literary Magazines Summit, Toronto. A chance to schmooze with colleagues in person. With 60+ lit mags (and those are the ones in English) across the country, it’s a challenge, keeping up with the surge of changes in the industry. Thanks to this year’s organizers and presenters.

April 20th: announcing the shortlist for this year’s National Magazine Awards. I had the pleasure of serving as one of three judges for the Best New Magazine Writer. We have incredible talent in this country. My best to all whose names were in the running. Keep digging. The work you do is vital. We need your voice.

Ongoing: TNQ’s diversity project began with introducing emerging writers from a broad range of backgrounds to the trials of breaking into publishing. Jagtar Atwal, Leonarda Carranza and Tamara Jong, in particular, have been our guides since 2016, when we really questioned whose works we were publishing, and why. Anna Ling Kaye, guest editor for TNQ’s summer issue (no. 143), as well as TNQ’s Consulting Editors Lamees Al Ethari and Tasneem Jamal have also been crucial to this process.

You can read more about the project at TNQ’s blog, under The Back Story.